First Images from Wally Pfister's TRANSCENDENCE!

The first images have been released (via EW) from award-winning cinematographer Wally Pfister's (INCEPTION) directorial debut, TRANSCENDENCE.

The film stars Johnny Depp in what will hopefully be a departure from the overly-zany characters he has been in the habit of playing over the past few years. He will play a researcher in artificial intelligence who uploads his own consciousness into the program when his life is put in jeopardy by a group of anti-technology extremists.

The film co-stars Rebecca Hall, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Kate Mara and Paul Bettany. It is scheduled for release on April 18, 2014.

Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is the foremost researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence, working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions. His highly controversial experiments have made him famous, but they have also made him the prime target of anti-technology extremists who will do whatever it takes to stop him. However, in their attempt to destroy Will, they inadvertently become the catalyst for him to succeed—to be a participant in his own transcendence. For his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and best friend Max Waters (Paul Bettany), both fellow researchers, the question is not if they can…but if they should. Their worst fears are realized as Will’s thirst for knowledge evolves into a seemingly omnipresent quest for power, to what end is unknown. The only thing that is becoming terrifyingly clear is there may be no way to stop him.